... UK, chiefly about the MOD's procurement system. Not a subject I knew much about, I approached the book expecting little. Discovering it had begun as a PhD reduced my expectations even further. In fact it is a fascinating read. If, like me, you had vaguely assumed that the defence sector was a cosy racket involving the MOD and the manufacturing companies ripping-off the tax-payer, you will discover that you were right; and with this book you will have the evidence to back-up your prejudices. Here, with some subheads, are the bits I text-marked on my way through it. St. Margaret of Grantham 'In many ways policy on defence procurement, even in the ...

... as as Nick Pope, J. Palmer, Owen Hartop, Kerry Philpott, and Ralph Noyes, respond to public inquiries. The knowledge of these individuals is limited and their responses consequently sometimes inaccurate. Contrary to claims made by Air Staff 2 (a) that they are privy to all UFO reports, there is a component within the MOD which deals with more serious aspects of this subject. On October 23 1989, in the course of one of my investigations, I contacted this particular MOD section. After the preliminary conversation I was asked if I was prepared to sell my investigation report to them; and later in the course of the conversation, when I suggested sharing ...

... met Margaret Mar one evening in late summer 1997. She confirmed she had taken Sebastian's information to the Ministry of Defence in private. They later informed her that, following consultation with the US Department of Defense officials, no record of the mission had been found. Clearly this was no denial. Moreover, the official who responded to the MOD enquiry was Bernard Rostker, the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illness. Hardly the person one would expect to be privy to top secret information on a sensitive CIA operation. Besides, I was to later learn that Black Cat almost certainly was subject to a 'compartmented' mission name, so that at different levels of the command structure the ...

... is thoroughly misleading in that it conceals the fact that I had been working for Information Policy from 1971. Peter Broderick's re-organisation of the Army Information Services, which transferred me to Information Policy, was, as he told the Civil Service Appeal Board, simply making formal an arrangement that had existed on an informal basis for several years. The MOD and the security services had, therefore, three years experience of my work with that unit before I was formally transferred to it on promotion. It is significant that neither MOD nor the security services prevented that transfer. p. 160 'Clockwork Orange attempted to link the IRA with the KGB and other foreign intelligence agencies supplying weapons and explosives ...

... due to be broadcast.’ 5 Within a few hours of the cloud seeding operations, some 90 million tonnes of water fell onto Lynmouth, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses, and causing the deaths of 35 people. Reporting in 2001, 'a BBC investigation has confirmed that secret experiments were causing heavy rainfall', though the Ministry of Defence (MOD) denied any connection between the seeding experiments and the flood. Initially, the MoD even denied conducting any cloud seeding experiments at all. 'Survivors tell how the air smelled of sulphur on the afternoon of the floods, and the rain fell so hard it hurt people's faces', the BBC reported. 'Trees were uprooted and formed dams ...

... who are currently working undercover as spies within the ranks of the IRA, carried out a series of terrorist bombings and shootings to preserve their cover as leading Provos. The British government is thwarting all efforts by the agents to come in from the cold and has abandoned the soldiers because of the offences they carried out while army agents. The MoD is refusing to pull them out of Northern Ireland and give them new identities to protect them from republican reprisals.' Sixteen Army officers inside the IRA? Is that FRU as in frug? On 3 February John Young's Cryptome website posted an anonymous article 'Enquiry: the killing years in Ireland'. (3) This is a very ...

... the Ministry of Defence confirmed the presence of one of the cover names, 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers, but denied the presence of the other, Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Team. Other than confirming that 4 Field Survey Troop were in Northern Ireland when and where Holroyd said they were, no further information was forthcoming, the MOD replying, through junior minister Roger Freeman, that 'Detailed information on this unit, which is not now deployed in the Province, is not available.'( [11]) Fast forward to 2006 and researchers in the national archives have discovered a 1974 army briefing paper titled 'Army Plain Clothes Patrols in Northern Ireland'. The briefing ...

... was an Army Intelligence agent, this is a pretty stupid line to defend. Nonetheless this line is at the heart of both of the Bruce and Urban books. Urban is an interesting figure. A sometime full-time soldier, now with the BBC, Urban affects not to be just the traditional defence correspondent, dependent on the droppings of the MOD press office. He notes in this book that while he was entitled to non-attributable briefings from the MOD, he chose not to have them while writing it. While non-attributable briefings are hardly a secret, the well-behaved media servant of the British state doesn't generally mention them. In the first and best section of the book, Urban takes ...

... http://webarchive. nationalarchives.gov.uk /+ /http:/www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDe fence/CorporatePublications/DoctrineOperationsandDiplomacyPubl icati ons/DCDC/TheDcdcGlobalStrategicTrendsProgra mme20072036.htm> 8 Foreign Office quoted in Curtis (see note 5) p. 41. security interests.’ 9 To the general public, NATO is promoted as a humanitarian intervener. As the UK MoD has said, the public only tolerates war when it perceives 'moral legitimacy'. Libya has the largest known oil reserves in Africa. Nigeria has the second largest known reserves. During the 2011 Parliamentary debate about whether or not to bomb Libya – which, in keeping with the Western concept of democracy, happened two days after the bombing ...